Let no man trust to the gentleness, the generosity, or seeming goodness of his heart, in the hope that they alone can safely bear him through the temptations of this world. This is a state of probation, and a perilous passage to the true beginning of life, where even the best natures need continually to be reminded of their weakness, and to find their only security in steadily referring all their thoughts, acts, affections, to the ultimate end of their being: yet where, imperfect as we are, there is no obstacle too mighty, no temptation too strong, to the truly humble in heart, who, distrusting themselves, seek to be sustained only by that holy Being who is life and power, and who, in his love and mercy, has promised to give to those that ask.--Such were my reflections, to which I was giving way on reading this melancholy story.
If he is satisfied with them, he may rest assured that he is neither fitted for this world nor the next. Even in this, there are wrongs and sorrows which no human remedy can reach;--no, tears cannot restore what is lost.
[Written in a book of sketches, with a pencil.]
A real debt of gratitude--that is, founded on a disinterested act of kindness--cannot be cancelled by any subsequent unkindness on the part of our benefactor. If the favor be of a pecuniary nature, we may, indeed, by returning an equal or greater sum, balance the moneyed part; but we cannot liquidate the kind motive by the setting off against it any number of unkind ones. For an after injury can no more undo a previous kindness, than we can prevent in the future what has happened in the past. So neither can a good act undo an ill one: a fearful truth! For good and evil have a moral life, which nothing in time can extinguish; the instant they exist, they start for Eternity. How, then, can a man who has once sinned, and who has not of himself cleansed his soul, be fit for heaven where no sin can enter? I seek not to enter into the mystery of the atonement, "which even the angels sought to comprehend and could not"; but I feel its truth in an unutterable conviction, and that, without it, all flesh must perish. Equally deep, too, and unalienable, is my conviction that "the fruit of sin is misery." A second birth to the soul is therefore a necessity which sin forces upon us. Ay,--but not against the desperate will that rejects it.
This conclusion was not anticipated when I wrote the first sentence of the preceding paragraph. But it does not surprise me. For it is but a recurrence of what I have repeatedly experienced; namely, that I never lighted on any truth which I inwardly felt as such, however apparently remote from our religious being, (as, for instance, in the philosophy of my art,) that, by following it out, did not find its illustration and confirmation in some great doctrine of the Bible,--the only true philosophy, the sole fountain of light, where the dark questions of the understanding which have so long stood, like chaotic spectres, between the fallen soul and its reason, at once lose their darkness and their terror.
The Hypochondriac.[4]
He would not taste, but swallowed life at once;
And scarce had reached his prime ere he had bolted,
With all its garnish, mixed of sweet and sour,
Full fourscore years. For he, in truth, did wot not
What most he craved, and so devoured all;
Then, with his gases, followed Indigestion,
Making it food for night-mares and their foals.Bridgen.[5]
It was the opinion of an ancient philosopher, that we can have no want for which Nature does not provide an appropriate gratification. As it regards our physical wants, this appears to be true. But there are moral cravings which extend beyond the world we live in; and, were we in a heathen age, would serve us with an unanswerable argument for the immortality of the soul. That these cravings are felt by all, there can be no doubt; yet that all feel them in the same degree would be as absurd to suppose, as that every man possesses equal sensibility or understanding. Boswell's desires, from his own account, seem to have been limited to reading Shakspeare in the other world,--whether with or without his commentators, he has left us to guess; and Newton probably pined for the sight of those distant stars whose light has not yet reached us. What originally was the particular craving of my own mind I cannot now recall; but that I had, even in my boyish days, an insatiable desire after something which always eluded me, I well remember. As I grew into manhood, my desires became less definite; and by the time I had passed through college, they seemed to have resolved themselves into a general passion for doing.
It is needless to enumerate the different subjects which one after another engaged me. Mathematics, metaphysics, natural and moral philosophy, were each begun, and each in turn given up in a passion of love and disgust.